[LINK] Jobs not all bad

[Stephen Wilson]

Wow, Fred Pilcher's mean-spirited diatribe against Steve Jobs in today's 
SMH Letters page sure takes the cake.  There's a lot not to like about 
Jobs, and the cult-of-personality is definitely toxic, but Fred himself 
adopts an ironically cultish tone.

He whinges that all Jobs did was repackage and market existing 
technologies.  Would Fred seriously demean the Apple II as mere 
repackaging of existing technologies?  I'm happy to admit that the Apple 
II changed my life, and absolutely I subscribe to the idea it 
revolutionised computing.

Fred rants on to casually dismiss Apple's influence on the music 
industry.  He says the iPod is nothing special for there are other ways 
to deliver digital music.  Well, there are all sorts of cars on the road 
today but you'd have to say Henry Ford had a lot to do with bringing 
that about.  For godsake, Jobs even changed the language!  You might 
have an Android device but you still "pod cast" with it.  Empirically, 
that's deep influence, like it or not.

Steve Wilson

Lockstep
http://lockstep.com.au